Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

In a famous exchange, which is preserved to us by Epictetus, Agrippinus was approached by a philosopher who was wrestling with whether he should attend and perform at some banquet thrown by Nero, one that we can imagine Seneca had prepared a speech for. Agrippinus told the man he should go. But why, the man asked? Because you were even thinking about it. For me, Agrippinus said, it’s not even a question.

To Agrippinus, there should be no hemming and hawing about the right thing. There should be no weighing of options. “He who once sets himself about such considerations,” Epictetus said about Agrippinus, “and goes to calculating the worth of external things, approaches very near to those who forget their own character.” Character is fate, is how Heraclitus—one of the Stoics’ favorite influences—put it. That was true for Agrippinus, as it had been for Aristo long ago and Cato too. He believed that only character decided difficult matters, and did so clearly and cleanly. No calculating, no consideration was necessary. The right thing was obvious.

When Agrippinus was eventually accused of conspiracy against Nero, he found himself brought up on charges just like his father. “I hope it may turn out well,” he said to a friend as his trial began, and then, noting the hour, reminded him that it was time for their daily exercise. As the Senate decided his fate, as his life hung in the balance, Agrippinus worked out and then relaxed in a cold bath. Just as Cato had enjoyed one final dinner before his demise, so Agrippinus took a nice steam before news was brought to him: You have been condemned.

A normal person might have fallen on their knees or cursed the injustice. Agrippinus betrayed neither anxiety nor fear about his fate. He had only practical questions. Banishment or death? Exile, his friends said. Did they confiscate my property? No, thank god, they told him. “Very well,” he said, “we shall take our lunch in Aricia.”

Aricia was the first stop on the road out of Rome. Meaning: We might as well get this exile show under way. No use bemoaning or weeping about it. Hey, is anyone else hungry?

Certainly many people—including his fellow Stoics—have responded to better circumstances with worse. But that’s who Agrippinus was—he was different. “I am not a hindrance to myself,” Epictetus quotes him as saying. He did not add to his troubles by bemoaning them. He would not compromise his dignity or his composure for matters big or small, whether it was a meaningless party or a cruel miscarriage of justice. “His character was such,” said Epictetus, “that when any hardship befell him he would compose a eulogy upon it; on fever, if he had a fever; on disrepute, if he suffered from disrepute; on exile, if he went into exile.”

He saw life for what it was, exile for what it was, the cruelty of emperors for what it was, accepted it, and moved on.

And for what was Agrippinus sent packing? What crime had he committed and on what evidence was he convicted? Tacitus comes up empty, but provides a clue when he explains that at the same time, Nero had also driven from Rome a young, viceless, and venomless poet simply because he had been too talented. So it was the same for Agrippinus. He had dared to be different. He had been the bright red in an empire where Nero deemed himself the only one worthy of standing out.

Because that’s the other expression that Agrippinus had either missed or decided he refused to be intimidated by: Yes, the beauty of the garment is made by the threads that stand out, but it’s equally true that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

To a man like Agrippinus—and his father before him—this was a cost worth paying. Indeed, they did not even consider the alternative.

SENECA THE STRIVER (SEH-ne-ka)

Origin: Corduba, Spain

B. 4 BC

D. 65 AD

It would please Lucius Annaeus Seneca very much to know that we are still talking about him today. Unlike many of his fellow Stoics, who wrote of the worthlessness of posthumous fame, Seneca craved it, worked for it, performed for it, right down to the last moments of his life and the theatrical suicide that would rival Cato’s.

Unlike Jesus, who was born the same year as Seneca in an equally far-flung province of the Roman Empire, there was little meekness or humility in Seneca. Instead, there was ambition and talent and a will to power that not only rivaled but surpassed Cicero’s.

Contemporaries may have believed that Cicero was a better writer and speaker, but Seneca is the more widely read figure today, for good reason. No one has written more cogently and relatably about the struggles of a human being in the world—their desire for tranquility, meaning, happiness, and wisdom. The readership of the essays and letters Seneca wrote over his long life has not only eclipsed Cicero’s, but in the long run likely all the other Stoics’ combined as well.

Just as he aimed all along.